Centre to open up coal mines to all

New Delhi, Oct. 21: A day after deciding to e- auction coal mines cancelled by the Supreme Court to captive users, finance minister Arun Jaitley on Tuesday said commercial mining of coal will soon be opened for private sector firms.

“They ( private companies) are already there for end use ( captive mining). I can’t bind myself by a timeline, but there would be some players, hopefully very soon they should be there in the field,” he said, when asked when the private sector would be allowed to enter the coal mining without end- use restrictions.

Currently, only Coal India, the world’s largest coal miner, and its smaller sister PSU Singareni Collieries besides mining agencies of state governments are allowed commercial coal mining.

In 1993, private sector participation in mining of coal for captive use by industries like steel, cement and power producers were allowed.

In an interview to a televison channel, Mr Jaitley said the ordinance the government is issuing to allocate the coal mines cancelled by the Supreme Court to state- owned power generator NTPC and state electricity boards as well as e- auction, has an enabling clause to allow private sector in commercial mining later.

“In the first round, we have given it to the actual users and this we intend completing in 3- 4 months. After this is done, the government can immediately thereafter start using that enabling power which has been given under the enabling Act. Therefore it is a much needed step forward,” he said. He was asked by when the private players will be allowed in coal mining.

The finance minister, however, categorically stated that the nature and structure of Coal India, will not be changed and there will be no privatisation of the company.

“Privatisation would involve if you are privatising Coal India. That’s not what we are doing. Coal India remains Coal India. It will remain the principal player, but in competition you can also have some private players coming in. They will be much smaller private player because nobody can match the size of Coal India. But you will have several smaller players," he said.

Private firms are being allowed in to increase coal output so that power generation can be increased.